The Dirty Grave
by Janec Shannon
Summary: Every week John cleans Sherlock's gravestone, the shiny marble gets dirty so easily. He doesn't know Mycroft occasionally has to have graffiti cleaned off it as well. Post-Reichenbach Sequel to The Empty Kitchen


_Thank you to the wonderful **She Steps On Cracks** for Brit-picking! :D_

_This technically takes place after my other fic The Empty Kitchen but it can be read as a standalone. I have a whole series of them planned out (I'm afraid this fandom has rather hijacked what little spare time I have… I love it too much to complain though). This is about one and half to two months after Reichenbach._

_Let me say that I love writing Mycroft and Anthea. They're just so much fun! I've got this image in my head of Mycroft's entire staff banding together to take care of John behind the scenes, allowing him to move on in his own time and heal in his own way, but in the meantime making his life just a little bit easier whenever they can. _

_Anyway, I hope to have the next one in the series quite soon. In the meantime enjoy this one :)_

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Mycroft pursed his lips with displeasure at the images that popped up in his email. _FAKE_, _PSYCHO_, and several other choice words were spray painted on the marble headstone and surrounding grass.

The man who was the British Government paused for a moment to study the woman sitting next to him before speaking. Her clothes were in an older woman's style, her hair done in a simple bun at the nape of her neck to accent the few natural grays that had sprouted. Tasteful. Comfortable. Completely unremarkable. Plain pearl earrings and a knotted pearl necklace. A silver charm bracelet with an old type font _M_.

He went through the list in his head of average names starting with _M _for women in their mid-thirties to early-forties. "Mary?"

"Minerva," she corrected without even looking up from her phone. He smiled pleasantly. A rarer name but very plain clothes: She wanted her existence to be remembered but not her face.

"Ah, of course. My apologies, Minerva," he responded politely and she gave a quiet hum of acceptance. "I've forwarded you an email from the surveillance team on Dr. Watson. Please arrange to have it cleaned up before he goes for his weekly visit."

The only sign she saw the pictures was the slightest tightening of the skin around her eyes before even that was wiped from her face and her expression became calculating. The clicking sound of her typing filled with intermittent pauses filled the air of the car as they drove, not stopping even after she told him, "Per the cleaners estimate, I've arranged for him to be delayed by an hour and a half."

"Thank you, Minerva."

A quite hum and the clicking of her phone was her only answer.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

John stood in front of the black headstone with pursed lips and an annoyed frown. It had rained heavily since he'd last been and the once-shiny black was now dull with water stains and mud.

"That bloody brother of yours," he muttered as he pulled a small container of water and cloth from a bag he'd brought with him but there was no real anger behind it. It came mainly out of habit now.

This was the one place the doctor allowed himself this: these conversations with the Sherlock that only existed in his head. In a graveyard, you could hold conversations with dead people without worrying the living. Mrs. Hudson was worried enough about him as it was.

But sometimes, if John pretended really hard, he could almost see Sherlock lying out on the grass next to him while they chatted. His fingers steepled. His eyes closed. Wearing one of his suits or maybe his pajamas and dressing gown. On one _particularly _unforgettable occasion (trust me, John had _tried _to forget), he wore nothing but his bedsheet.

On the bad days, the _really_ bad days, he'd be wearing his coat and scarf.

What had once been a source of humor (_Do we have to do this? With the cheekbones and the upturned collar and the being all mysterious?_) had become what his mind used to torture him when he was feeling particularly masochistic. It never failed to bring forth memories almost too painful to bear and certainly too painful to remember.

Memories of _I'm a fake_ lies and _Goodbye, John_s.

Of tall buildings and hard pavement.

Of arms spread wide and of coattails flapping in the wind.

Of falling.

Of blood.

So, so much blood.

"I should never have let him choose your headstone," John said to force the conversation onward. Both of them pointedly ignored how his voice shook (the real Sherlock wouldn't have, but this was John's Head-Sherlock). "It's just your style though, isn't it? All black and shiny and mysterious. You'd love it, if Mycroft hadn't been the one to pick it."

_Don't be ridiculous, John. Whether or not Mycroft picked it has absolutely no bearing on how much I like it. _

John shook his head in amusement, knowing a lie from Sherlock (real or in his head) when he heard one.

_Besides,_ John's Head-Sherlock continued, _you'd be annoyed if you didn't get to clean my headstone every week. _

John snorted, "You think do this every week for my health?"

_Not your physical health, no, but your mental health, surely. _

"And how do you figure that?"

_Because you **take care** of me, John. It's just what you **do**. You took care of my transport while I was alive and now that I'm not, you take care of my headstone. _

John faltered in his cleaning and had to grab hold of the cool marble to steady himself. Sometimes Head-Sherlock was a bit too much like the real one.

_The psychology behind it is all rather dull._

He took a deep, if somewhat shaky, breath and closed his eyes.

_John?_

He could hear the hesitance in Head-Sherlock's voice, the worry that only John ever seemed to pick up on (when it had been the real one). He could see the way Head-Sherlock froze, pausing in his tirade and looking to his blogger to see why his comment had been met with silence. He could feel the way Sherlock studied him, cataloguing every twitch, trying to place exactly what his reaction meant.

John saw all this, even though his eyes were closed...

Because Sherlock wasn't really lying in the grass next to him in his grey suit.

Because that Sherlock was in his head and the real Sherlock was two meters below John's feet.

Because the real Sherlock was dead and all John had left was a poor substitute.

_Not good?_

"Bit not good, Sherlock," he told the cold marble, the wet soil, and the sometimes-too-real (but never real enough) illusion. "Bit not good."

John dipped the cloth in the little container of water and resumed his cleaning, "So, Lestrade dropped by today..."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Olivia," Mycroft called out to catch her attention before she walked out of his office. The woman turned to look at him questioningly. "The surveillance on Dr. Watson pass along their compliments. They said the watermarks from the rain were a nice touch."

Her brows drew together in a confused frown. "Sir?"

"The cleanup job this morning. You were Minerva," he explained patiently, knowing she would have dismissed the event from her mind as soon as it was dealt with. Her frown deepened momentarily before she pulled out her phone and scrolled through emails and chat logs. He saw it the moment she found what she was looking for.

"Ah. I will pass along the compliments to the transcriber," Olivia replies, typing away at her phone already. "It was her idea. Apparently he seemed..." she paused to consider before saying (in a tone that implied she was just repeating what the transcriber had said and really had no idea what exactly it meant), "..._off_ the last time the last time he visited and the headstone was already clean."

Mycroft paused to consider a moment. "Send me her file, will you?" he requested. He made it a point to keep track of his employees that showed promise. His phone buzzed with an email before he'd even finished his question.

"Anything else?"

"No, that's all," he told her and dismissed her with a vague wave of his hand.


End file.
